[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 16136-16141]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              IMMIGRATION

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, it has been 511 days since the Senate 
passed bipartisan legislation to reform our broken immigration system. 
Fourteen Republicans joined the Democrats in supporting a measure which 
covered what I believe are the major challenges facing America when it 
comes to immigration in the 21st century.
  There was an amendment adopted by Senator Corker, and I believe 
Senator Hoeven cosponsored it. Their amendment would have strengthened 
our border security to unprecedented levels.
  At this moment in time, we have more Federal law enforcement 
officials on the border between the United States and Mexico than the 
combined population of all other Federal law enforcement agencies. It 
is a massive commitment which would have been enhanced even more by the 
comprehensive immigration reform bill.
  For those border State Senators, we would have reached the point 
where--from Galveston to San Diego--we would have literally had 
available a law enforcement agent every half mile 24 hours a day, 7 
days a week. It is a massive investment, and it passed the Senate 511 
days ago.
  That same bill addressed some serious issues about agriculture 
workers in Illinois, California, Texas, and all across the Nation. 
Growers are telling us they are having a difficult time bringing in the 
workers who will do the backbreaking, hard, physical labor necessary 
for agriculture. This bill addressed it. In fact, the bill was endorsed 
by both growers as well as those who do the work. It was an amazing 
political achievement.
  It also addressed the issue of H-1Bs. Why in the world do we bring 
the best and brightest from around the world to the United States for 
advanced degrees, advanced education and then welcome them to leave? If 
they stayed and worked to create jobs and new businesses and new 
innovations in America, we could build our economy. The bill addressed 
it.
  As important as all of those issues are, the bill addressed 11 
million undocumented people in America--11 million, and that is just an 
estimate. The bill said those who were here undocumented--who had been 
here for several years--could step up, register with the government, 
pay their filing fee, submit themselves to a background check, pay 
their taxes, and then be reviewed annually for years to make sure they 
were still complying with the laws of the United States.
  They would not qualify for government benefits or programs during 
this period of time, but they could work their way to legal status. 
That bill passed the Senate on a bipartisan basis with 68 votes. The 
bill then went over to the House of Representatives where, sadly, it 
languished. Nothing happened.
  The Speaker of the House refused to call the bill up for a vote. In 
fact, he refused to call any aspect of the bill up for a vote. He 
refused to call it in committee for any consideration or debate, and 
then he let it languish. There were times when the House Republican 
leadership tempted the White House and others by saying: Well, maybe 
now we can call it up for a vote. They never, ever did. We have waited 
511 days, and here we are today.
  This evening, President Obama is going to announce an Executive order 
to address immigration. He has waited patiently, and America has waited 
patiently for the Republicans in the House of Representatives to step 
forward and accept this responsibility, but they have refused. They 
have refused to fix this broken immigration system, and you can bet as 
soon as the President issues his Executive order, there will be a 
chorus of complaints that this President has gone too far by using his 
Executive authority to address this issue.
  You won't hear the facts from the critics. You won't hear from the 
critics that every President since Dwight David Eisenhower--I believe 
11 different Democrats and Republicans--have issued Executive orders 
relating to immigration. President George Herbert Walker Bush basically 
said--by

[[Page 16137]]

Executive order--that we are not going to prosecute 1.5 million 
undocumented immigrants in America. He used his prosecutorial 
discretion. That is the kind of thing which we have come to expect from 
Presidents, and we expect Congress to complain about it. That has 
continued.
  Here is what we believe President Obama will announce today. The 
details are just starting to emerge in press reports. He is going to 
announce that we are going to push for accountability in immigration. 
Senator Marco Rubio was on the bipartisan panel that put together the 
comprehensive immigration reform bill. He said something that was very 
pressing, and I wish to refer to it at this moment. He said for those 
who criticize amnesty, doing nothing is amnesty for those who are here 
in the United States and undocumented. Doing nothing is amnesty.
  What President Obama is going to suggest--instead of amnesty--is 
accountability. Here is what he will say. Those who have children who 
are American citizens and have been here at least 5 years will have a 
chance to step forward and register with the government, pay the filing 
fee for processing, submit themselves to a criminal background check, 
and pay their taxes.
  The President says, if you will do that--under his order--it is my 
understanding it will say you can legally work in America. They will 
not become a citizen nor will they have legal status beyond the work 
permit, but they don't have to fear deportation. They are down the list 
and are not considered a dangerous person who should be deported.
  The highest priority for those who will be deported are those with 
criminal records, and they should be deported. There is no room in the 
United States for anyone--let alone undocumented--who come here and 
commit a crime.
  Secondly, if you have repeat offenders and those who violated the 
legal system, they will be in the second category.
  The third category of those who meet the criteria I mentioned will be 
given their chance.
  This is about accountability. This really says to those who wish to 
say: If you will play by these rules, we will give you a chance to stay 
and work.
  What is the reason? We want to deport felons; we don't want to deport 
families. We want to deport criminals; we don't want to deport 
children. We will focus our efforts on the borders on those who are 
trying to come across and those who are here and should leave. That 
means more resources would be put into enforcement, and it also means 
that those who are here will be registered. We will know who they are, 
where they are, where they are working, and we will know that they are 
paying their taxes to stay in this country.
  The alternative from the Republican point of view--for 511 days--is 
to do nothing. That is an unacceptable alternative.
  There is a better alternative to an Executive order, and the 
President will be the first to say it, and that is that this Congress--
on a bipartisan basis--rolls up its sleeves and tackles this issue. We 
should. That is why we were elected. To do nothing, as the House has 
done for 511 days, is unacceptable. To stand by the sidelines and 
criticize this President for using his Executive authority--the same 
Executive authority used over and over again by Presidents of both 
political parties in the field of immigration--is not constructive.
  There is one other thing that is even worse. Some Members of the 
other party are suggesting they are prepared to shut down the 
Government of the United States over this issue. If the President uses 
his legal authority, they have threatened to shut down the Government 
of the United States.
  We saw that last year when the junior Senator from Texas took the 
floor and said he was going to close down the government over the issue 
of the Affordable Care Act. It was a terrible strategy. A lot of 
innocent people were hurt. It cost our government and our economy 
dearly. It was a politically desperate act which I hope will not be 
repeated ever again--certainly not when it comes to the issue of 
immigration.
  If there was ever a time for us to stand together--both political 
parties--and solve a problem, this is it. Standing on the sidelines and 
complaining--which is what we have heard over and over again from the 
House Republican leadership and continue to hear when it comes to the 
President's Executive order--is not the kind of constructive policy the 
American people need.
  I applaud the President. He is going to take a lot of grief for 
this--for using his Executive power--but thank goodness he is stepping 
up and addressing the problem. Where others have walked away from it, 
ignored it, and come up with every excuse on Earth, he is directly 
addressing the problem. And now it is time for us in the Congress to do 
the same thing.
  We are going to come back after Thanksgiving and will be here for at 
least 10 days. Speaker Boehner, leader of the Republican House, has the 
authority to instantly call to the floor of the House this bipartisan 
immigration bill which passed the Senate. There is no excuse. If he is 
going to criticize the President for using his power to solve a 
problem, then the Speaker should use his power to address that same 
problem. Call the comprehensive immigration reform bill before we leave 
at the end of this year. Bring it up for a vote in the House. I think 
it will pass.
  If it passes, and we do--by legislation--a much broader review and 
change in the immigration reform bill, we will have done what we were 
elected to do. We will have served this Nation, and we will have set 
out to repair this broken immigration system.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I am glad I came to the floor and heard my 
friend and colleague, the majority whip, from Illinois, and his 
explanation for how it is clearly within the President's authority to 
issue this Executive order he plans on announcing tonight. The basic 
problem is the President himself has said repeatedly he doesn't have 
that authority. He said it repeatedly. We have all seen the clips on TV 
and online. He said he doesn't have the power to do it. He was right 
then, and he is wrong now.
  There is a right way and a wrong way to solve problems. The right way 
would have been during the first 2 years, after President Obama won the 
election in 2008 and his party commanded 60 votes in the Senate and a 
majority in the House of Representatives. If this had been a priority 
for him, he could have done it then.
  Instead, on a party-line vote, he chose to jam through the Affordable 
Care Act--ObamaCare--and we see what a disaster that has been. It was 
not just me. I was a skeptic. I didn't think it would work. While the 
goals were laudable and worthy, I just didn't think the Federal 
Government had the competence or certainly the ability to reconfigure 
one-sixth of our economy. But the President did it, his party passed 
it, and it enjoyed no bipartisan support.
  That is one of the basic problems with what the President is doing 
today. The reason why it is so important to follow the Constitution--
which requires passing legislation affecting 5 million people through 
both Houses of Congress and forces us to negotiate and build 
consensus--is because those are sustainable policies.
  If you try to do things on a ``my way or the highway'' basis or on a 
purely partisan basis, those are not sustainable because we know that 
as time goes by, today's majority will be tomorrow's minority. Now a 
Democrat occupies the White House. Perhaps next time a Republican will 
occupy the White House. Who knows. The point is that only objectives we 
pursue through the legislative process according to the Constitution 
and the laws of the United States of America that are done on a 
bipartisan basis through that natural census-building that is required 
in order to reach our goals--those are truly sustainable policies. And 
when the President decides to do it through an Executive order, 
exercising powers that he himself said he does not have, what are 
people supposed to think?

[[Page 16138]]

  I heard my friend from Illinois say, Well, it has been 511 days and 
Republicans haven't swallowed the comprehensive immigration reform bill 
that has come from the Senate. They are not required to swallow it. 
They can pass legislation or not on their own timetable. The old joke 
is that the opposing party is our adversary, but the Senate is the 
enemy. That is the joke in House circles. So there is a natural rivalry 
between the House and the Senate. They are not expected nor required to 
accept what we pass, nor are they required to do it on our timetable. I 
believe Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader McCarthy are committed, as 
am I and the incoming majority leader come January, Senator McConnell, 
to making progress on an incremental basis in this important area. It 
has to be thoughtful, and we have to have fulsome debate with everybody 
participating in the process.
  There are important questions. What impact is the President's 
Executive order going to have when the unemployment rate is still at 
5.8 percent nationally and when the percentage of people actually 
looking for work is at a 30-year low because many people have given up 
because of the slow-growing economy? What is the impact of these 5 
million--or however many additional work permits the President presumes 
to have the power to issue--what is the impact going to be on 
competition for jobs with the economy growing slowly and jobs in short 
supply? What is the impact of the President's Executive order going to 
be on household median income? We know wages have been stagnant for the 
middle class because of this slow-growing economy. What is the impact 
of millions of additional people competing for jobs in the economy 
going to be on wages?
  I would like to have the answers to those questions.
  I would also like to know if the President has the power--which he 
said he doesn't have but now apparently he has changed his mind--to 
issue this kind of Executive order affecting 5 million people? What 
about the other 6 million people who are in the country who did not 
come in in compliance with our immigration laws, who either overstayed 
their visas or came across the border illegally?
  I come from a border State. We have 1,200 miles of common border with 
Mexico. We encountered what was described as a humanitarian crisis 
because we had this magnet known as the impression that we would not 
enforce our laws that encouraged people to make that treacherous 
journey from Central America across Mexico. Many of these immigrants 
lost their lives, were sexually assaulted or kidnapped and held for 
ransom--very dangerous circumstances in the hands of the criminal 
organizations that basically control this business. This is a business 
for them. But if the President has the authority to do this for 5 
million, why not the 11 million? How does he explain his action to the 
6 million people who will now see these 5 million getting preferential 
treatment? And how in the world does he explain it to the people who 
have waited patiently year after year trying to do it the right way? 
The President has effectively bumped them out of the line and bumped 5 
million people ahead of them.
  I have every confidence that if we were able to do this in a 
thoughtful, deliberative sort of way, we could find a compassionate and 
satisfactory outcome for the people who made the mistake of entering 
the country illegally or who have overstayed. I believe in 
proportionality. We don't give the death penalty for speeding tickets. 
So I think there is an appropriate way to address this, but it is not 
by an amnesty. I call it an amnesty because, basically, there is no 
reconciliation process. In other words, when a person makes a mistake--
and we all make mistakes and we all understand the aspirations and 
hopes immigrants bring to the United States because they come here for 
the same reason people have historically come here, and that is for the 
American dream. We understand that. But we also understand that when 
somebody has made a mistake, they need to own up to it and they need to 
reconcile themselves to lawful authority because, otherwise, the 
attitude is the law doesn't matter, and it is the law that protects all 
of us no matter who we are, where we come from, or how we pronounce our 
last name. And when we have a lawless process, as we do now and which 
this Executive order does nothing to fix, what that does is perpetuate 
lawlessness and chaos, and it also continues to enrich these criminal 
organizations that are more than happy to charge people $5,000, $6,000 
a head to make that treacherous journey.
  Beyond all of the issues I just addressed, this is a terrible 
precedent. Again, I understand now the President has decided--and some 
of our Democratic colleagues say, Well, this is the same thing George 
Bush did and this is the same thing Dwight Eisenhower did. Well, it is 
not, and the President knew that when he said he didn't have the 
authority to do this previously. Now he has changed his mind. Now the 
argument is they issued Executive orders essentially implementing 
bipartisan legislation such as the 1986 amnesty that Ronald Reagan 
signed. There were Executive orders taken in furtherance of that 
consensus position based on the legislation. However, never has any 
President purported to have the authority to, out of whole cloth, do 
what this President says he is going to do.
  Where does he get the authority to issue work permits? I understand 
he can prioritize prosecution and deportation, and he has, but where 
does the President get the authority to issue work permits for millions 
of people?
  This is rocking people's fundamental confidence in their government. 
We elect Presidents to faithfully enforce the laws, including the 
Constitution of the United States. That is the oath the President takes 
when he is sworn in: ``I do solemnly swear.'' These laws, of course, 
are beyond the Constitution drafted by Congress. It is ``Schoolhouse 
Rock.'' Bills start in the House, and in the Senate they have to be 
reconciled and then sent to the President. That is civics 101. Maybe we 
need a new course called remedial civics 101 for those who have somehow 
forgotten how the Constitution is written and how it actually is 
implemented in the form of the legislative process.
  Of course, if the President objects to what Congress sends him, that 
is when the negotiations start. He can veto it. We can vote to override 
it if we have the votes. If we don't, we are back to square one and we 
have to start that negotiation again.
  I have never seen or even read of a President who seems so detached, 
so disinterested in actually engaging in this process set out by the 
Constitution. This President says if he doesn't get his way, I have a 
pen. I have a phone. I am going to go it alone. Well, that is a 
disaster waiting to occur, because it is a provocation to the other 
branches of government which say, Well, we are not irrelevant in this 
process and we may have something to say about it. I think we will see 
some of that in the very near future with regard to the way 
appropriations are made and what functions of government fund it.
  I heard my friend from Illinois say, People are even threatening a 
government shutdown. That is not true.
  I take that back. The Democrats are saying that. No Republican has 
said that. It is just not going to happen. It shouldn't happen and it 
won't happen.
  I love it when our friends in the other party like to tell us about 
our own internal politics. I was at the White House with the President 
and bicameral, bipartisan leadership and our Democratic friends said 
that the House of Representatives can't pass any immigration reform 
bill. Well, I don't know how they know that, unless they have some 
insider wisdom that is not obvious to the people who actually work 
there and have the responsibility to make it work.
  What I know and what I believe is that there is a good-faith desire 
to try to solve this problem, but not by what I call the ``pig in the 
python'' approach. In other words, we tried that with the Affordable 
Care Act, a 2,700-page bill involving trillions of dollars of 
expenditure done purely on a partisan basis and it didn't work. I think 
there is an understandable aversion to

[[Page 16139]]

trying to do things in a comprehensive sort of way. So why not break it 
down into pieces and do what we can, because there are a lot of 
different pieces that enjoy bipartisan support.
  I think the precedent the President is setting is very dangerous, 
because if he purports now to have this power which he previously said 
on numerous occasions he didn't have, what about future Presidents? 
What about policies others may not like? Even if a person believes this 
is a pretty good idea--a person might say, The President is trying to 
act because obviously this is a controversial issue and things aren't 
moving fast enough, so I like what the President is doing. Suppose a 
person says that. Well, just think about the possibility that a few 
years from now when we have an election, we have a new President, and 
what if that President says, Well, President Obama purported to 
exercise this massive Executive authority in defiance of the 
Constitution and the laws, so I guess I can do it, too.
  This is not the kind of political system we want. This is not good 
for the American people. We do not want a system in which each party, 
when they happen to be in power, takes their turn abusing Executive 
authority. We do not want that. I would have thought there are enough 
people who love this institution known as the U.S. Senate and believe 
it has an indispensable role in our government who would say, Wait, Mr. 
President, don't do it, because we may like the policy, but this really 
is an end run around the Constitution and the role that is 
appropriately played by both Houses of Congress and the Executive.
  But, apparently, there are few, if any, folks on the other side of 
the aisle who believe that our tradition and our constitutional system 
of legislating is worth preserving--at least in this instance.
  I have spoken at some length about the practical consequences of the 
President's amnesty, but those consequences also bear repeating since 
the eyes of the country are now focused on what the President is going 
to announce tonight. We know from recent experience that the 
President's unilateral amnesty will be communicated to people in other 
countries as a signal that they can all come in. That is what happened 
with the unaccompanied children; 62,000 of them I think the number is, 
roughly, from Central America since last October. The reason there was 
a flood and a humanitarian crisis, as described by the President and 
the administration themselves, is because the signal was the green 
light is on and people can come to the United States.
  People need to come legally. As long as they get here, they can stay. 
This is because it undermines one of the basic premises of effective 
law enforcement, and that is deterrence. In other words, we don't want 
to just try to stop people after they break the law. Actually, it is 
too late to stop them. What we like to do is deter people from even 
thinking about breaking the law and, in this instance, even making that 
perilous journey.
  There is going to be a surge, an uptick, of some type of an illegal 
immigration. People are going to see this as a further signal it is OK 
to come, and they don't need to comply with the law, they don't need to 
wait. They can just come. If they are one of the lucky ones, they get 
to stay because this President or somebody will issue a further pardon.
  As I said earlier, this is also a major boom to the cartels and other 
gangs who control Mexico's smuggling networks. It will almost certainly 
lead to thousands of people who committed crimes in this country 
gaining legal status. It will also, as I said earlier, punish people 
who played by the rules and waited patiently in line trying to 
immigrate to the country legally. It will punish them by putting them 
in the back of the line.
  Let me just repeat this because it is important to me. America is the 
most generous country in the world when it comes to legal immigration. 
We are the beneficiary of the brains, the ambition, the hard work of 
people who come here from all over the globe. All of us weren't--or 
almost all of us, our ancestors were not born in the United States. We 
came from somewhere else. Mine came through Ellis Island from Ireland 
after one of the potato crop famines in the 19th century. So we 
understand both the desire to pursue the American dream in this country 
and the benefits that accrue to our country as a result of legal 
immigration. That is why we are such a generous country when it comes 
to legal immigration, but the current chaos associated with illegal 
immigration has a number of very negative consequences.
  I mentioned a moment ago my State has 1,200 miles of common border. 
It gets attention every once in a while as it did when this 
humanitarian crisis involving these unaccompanied minors occurred, but 
it happens day after day that people are detained coming across the 
southwestern border from all over the world.
  I met a young man about 6 months ago when I was down on the border 
who had emigrated from Bangladesh. I wondered how in the world did he 
get here from there. There were a number of other Senators and 
Congressmen with me. We asked the Border Patrol: Can we ask him? They 
said: Sure.
  It turned out he spoke enough English. I asked: Well, how much did it 
cost you to get here?
  He said: Six thousand dollars.
  I said: How did you get here?
  He said: I had to transit eight countries to get here.
  That is a pretty complicated itinerary for anybody even under normal 
circumstances, but what it demonstrates is there are networks not just 
in Central America and Mexico but around the world that feed people 
into this network in order to immigrate to the United States illegally. 
What we are doing is nothing about that. Last year people were detained 
at the southwestern border from 140 different countries. If someone 
goes down to the outside of Falfurrias, TX, down in South Texas, they 
have rescue beacons the Border Patrol has put out. If someone made this 
long trip from Central America through Mexico in the hot weather, let's 
say, and they are dehydrated, they are worried about their life and 
their health, they can actually go hit this rescue beacon and the 
Border Patrol will come pick them up which is maybe not their first 
choice, but it is better than dying from exposure.
  The languages of those rescue beacons, the ones I saw outside the 
checkpoint at Falfurrias, TX--they are in English, Spanish--that 
doesn't surprise anybody. The third language is Chinese. Chinese is not 
a native language for most--for anybody, I bet, in Brooks County, TX. 
What it demonstrates is that there is a pipeline coming across the 
southwestern border from all over the world. It doesn't take a lot of 
imagination to see what a potential threat that is from a public safety 
standpoint.
  I know there are people who scoff at the idea of enhanced border 
security. The Senator from Illinois said we have enough Border Patrol 
to have one every half mile, 24 hours a day. This would be a way to try 
to secure the border. It has to be a combination of technology. It has 
to involve boots on the ground, and in some places--this is 
controversial along the border--we need to have what they call tactical 
infrastructure, fencing in some places, particularly in urban areas 
where it is easy to sprint across and be lost in a crowd before anybody 
discovers them.
  Last year there were roughly 414,000 people detained coming across 
the southwestern border--414,000 from more than 144 countries. Does 
that sound as though we solved the problem of border security? No.
  We are also sending mixed messages, as I said earlier, in terms of 
deterrence because people keep coming because they think they have a 
pretty good shot of making it in, and then the President issues an 
Executive order.
  I wish to mention one other issue that has a particular impact on 
communities in my State of Texas, because we are on the frontlines of 
this issue, which is cost to the local taxpayer. I know the 
distinguished Presiding Officer is a former mayor. The cost of health 
care, law enforcement, and education fall not primarily on Federal 
taxpayers, they end up falling on local

[[Page 16140]]

taxpayers, including the taxes they pay for their school district or 
their city or their county, the emergency health care provided to the 
local emergency room and of course law enforcement costs.
  Believe me, people who come across the border are not all coming for 
the right reason. There are people who exploit our porous border with 
criminal intent on their mind. They are dangerous, and so law 
enforcement has to take special precautions. That costs money. It costs 
the local taxpayers.
  The Federal Government has been abdicating its responsibility along 
the border for a long time. I, for one, have to chuckle when my friends 
from nonborder States want to tell me and tell my constituents about 
our backyard because frankly, to put it in a nice way, they need more 
information because they don't know what they are talking about.
  Most of my friends in the--this is understandable. We all understand 
our States and our regions. We know them better than other parts of the 
country that perhaps we haven't been to, but most of my colleagues--I 
get the impression that their knowledge of the border is from movies 
they have seen or novels they have read, not from the facts on the 
ground or studying statistics issued by the Border Patrol or the 
Department of Homeland Security.
  There is a right way and a wrong way to do what the President is 
purporting to do. The right way to do it is in accordance with the 
Constitution which requires both Houses to pass legislation and try to 
reconcile those in a conference committee and then send them to the 
President.
  There are regular negotiations taking place all along the way, but 
there are enough areas of consensus that I believe we can make true 
progress. We have not been able to do it through a comprehensive bill 
because I think there is enormous skepticism, not just about Washington 
but about Congress as well as about comprehensive bills having 
unintended consequences.
  Take the Affordable Care Act. The President said: If you like what 
you have, you can keep it. Your prices will go down, not up. That ended 
up not being true. When that happens people are skeptical. What are 
they trying to sell us next? The best way to deal with that, it seems 
to me, is to break it down into smaller, transparent pieces, and then 
move the pieces across the floor in the House and the Senate, and let's 
get them to the President.
  After we have done that one, two, three, four times, I think people 
will then say: Well, you know what we have just done is immigration 
reform in an incremental sort of way. It is not going to satisfy 
everybody. Again, if your demand is I want everything I want or I am 
not going to take anything, we know what happens when people lay down 
those sort of ultimatums. You get nothing.
  While there are areas on the immigration topic, which admittedly is 
controversial, it is challenging, but it is our responsibility to 
address these challenges and these difficulties and do the very best 
job we can. The answer is not--and it can't be--a Presidential abuse of 
power.
  As I pointed out earlier, when we try to do things on that basis, 
just like if we try to pass legislation on a purely partisan basis, it 
doesn't work. It is not sustainable. It is a provocation to the people 
who have been carved out of the process to try to do what they can to 
defend their role in the process, and that is what I worry about.
  I remember being at a conference not that long ago when James Baker 
III and Joseph Calafato spoke. They talked about the importance of 
bipartisanship. Not that I am ever going to get the Presiding Officer 
to agree with me on everything I believe and he is not going to agree 
with me on everything I believe, but they made the point when it comes 
to some of the most challenging topics, bipartisanship solutions are 
the only ones that are actually sustainable.
  What happens is after the next election, the party that was pushed 
out of the process and run over then says, OK, we are going to try to 
repeal everything they did because we didn't vote for it and we don't 
support it. That commends itself to my way of thinking to a 
recommitment of bipartisan accomplishment. I am committed to that.
  I know from talking to colleagues across the aisle that after 4 years 
of being shut out of the process themselves in the Senate, they are 
going to enjoy the new Congress come January because they will be able 
to participate in the process. If people have a good idea, they can 
come to the floor and talk about it. They can offer their idea and get 
a vote.
  Nobody is guaranteed to win every time, but people should have a 
right to get a vote and to raise the profile of the issues they care 
most about and the people they work for care most about.
  I wish the President wouldn't do this. It will not work. It is 
unconstitutional. It purports to exercise a power he himself said he 
does not have, but he seems determined to do it nonetheless.
  I believe the American people will react negatively to this 
President's claim of authority to issue this amnesty, and I believe 
then the next step is for Congress to do everything we can to stop it 
and then to do it the right way, not the wrong way.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Booker). The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, the words of Cicero are powerfully relevant 
2,077 years later: When, President Obama, do you mean to cease abusing 
our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When 
is there to be an end to that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering 
about as it does now? Do not the nightly guards placed on the border, 
do not the watches posted throughout the city, does not the alarm of 
the people and the union of all good men and women--does not the 
precaution taken of assembling the Senate in this most defensible 
place--do not the looks and countenances of this venerable body here 
present, have any effect upon you? Do you not feel that your plans are 
detected? Do you not see that your conspiracy is already arrested and 
rendered powerless by the knowledge that everyone here possesses of it? 
What is there that you did last night, what the night before--where is 
it that you were--who was there that you summoned to meet you--what 
design was there which was adopted by you, with which you think that 
any one of us is unacquainted?
  Shame on the age and on its lost principles. The Senate is aware of 
these things; the Senate sees them; and yet this man dictates by his 
pen and his phone. Dictates. Aye, he will not even come into the 
Senate. He will not take part in the public deliberations; he ignores 
every individual among us. We gallant men and women think that we are 
doing our duty to the Republic if we keep out of the way of his 
frenzied attacks.
  You ought, President Obama, long ago to have been led to defeat by 
your own disdain for the people. That destruction which you have been 
long plotting ought to have already fallen. What shall we, who are the 
Senate, tolerate President Obama, openly desirous to destroy the 
Constitution and this Republic? For I passed over old instances, such 
as how the IRS plotted to silence American citizens.
  There was once such virtue in this Republic that brave men and women 
would repress mischievous citizens with severe chastisement than the 
most bitter enemy. For we have a resolution of the Senate, a formidable 
and authoritative decree against you, Mr. President. The wisdom of the 
Republic is not at fault, nor the dignity of this Senatorial body. We, 
we alone--I say it openly--we, the Senate, are waiting in our duty to 
stop this lawless administration and its unconstitutional amnesty.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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